One Marriage Under God - Breaking the Silence

Nate and I read the first chapter and we both think the book is going to be promising. Wright really laid out the current situation of marriage in our culture and I have to say - it's heartbreaking.

There was way too much good in it for me to write it all, but I will definitely be using it in my future papers :)

He made a huge point that marriage is God's idea. It only matters what HE thinks. Simple, but I think we ignore it too much.

Overall, I think the worst part was when he talked about how we act when confronted with something that erodes the insitution of marriage: living-together, divorce.

I don't have to deal with Divorce to much but I have quite a few friends who live together. Quite honestly, I don't want to confront them because I feel it's not my place unless they ask me and I also feel like they won't talk with me anymore :( Still, -- God did not give me a spirit of timidity --

Jesus, help me through this!

O and I liked this quote by Dr. WIlliam Doherty:

Marriage with the long view comes with the conviction that nothing will break us up and that we will fight through whatever obstacles get in our way. It means we will re calibrate our individual goals if they get out of alignment and that we will share leadership for maintaining and renewing our marriage. We will renovate our marriage if the current version gets stale, and if we fight too much or too poorly we will learn to fight better.

We will develop good communication skills and constructive ways to argue and deal with conflict. If sex is no longer good we'll find a way to make it good again.

We need to acknowledge that our core strengths and core weaknesses will always be with us. The trick is to build on the strengths and to contain and soften the impact of the weaknesses when they show themselves, especially in times of stress. We will accept the weaknesses that can't be fixed and we will take care of each other in our old age.

This kind of commitment is not made just once, but over and over through the course of a lifetime. We cling to it during the dark nights of the soul that come to nearly every marriage and in those times when the love is hard to feel, knowing all the time that the promise we made keeps us together till the end.

 God, I love the marriage we share with Nathan, but help me to uphold it with other couples too. And help me to do it in a kind, loving way. It's kinda scarey!